Sunday, November 9, 2008

When I was little, my mommy forbade us to use her colognes, so, of course we stole uses ever so often, and we thought it a great honour and privilege to be given a 'legal spray' from the lady herself.

One day we were all going somewhere very special, and mummy felt extra-generous with her cologne. She lined us up (four kids) and sprayed each of us: two squirts behind the ears, one on the neck, and one squirt splat in the middle of our chests.

So my turn came, and I got sprayed. And I felt good for about two minutes. Then the damn thing started to burn.

Ruthie: Mummy, it a bun me inna me chest...Mummy: Speak better than that child!!Ruthie (baring her burning chest-- and with a heavy lisp): It is burning me into my yasso!

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

I can't begin to imagine how the father of former Immaculate Conception High Head girl, Pia Phillips, must feel. In a time when most parents want to preserve the lives of their children, he accidentally shot his... on her 18th birthday!! She died shortly thereafter.

The man must be beating himself. And wanting to die too. Can you imagine? For the rest of his life, he has to live with the knowledge: He killed his daughter...

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Mummy: Hey Ruth, listen to me: I love you, hear? And just... be careful on the road... Make sure you pray before you leave the house and watch who you go into taxi with... Just... be careful, y'hear?

An ominous, unsettling dread filled the pit of my stomach. A lump formed in the back of my throat. Sudden weariness overtook me. I blinked hard and swallowed before I hung up the phone.

My mom is worried about me... My mom - this woman who has always been a pillar of strength and certainty that God will watch over her children, this woman who never worries because she knows that when we were younger, she drilled general safety rules into our heads and trained us well, this woman - felt the need to tell me to be careful... because she's seen so many young girls get abducted and raped and sodomised and burned and murdered in the last few weeks that she's become agitated about the safety of her own children.

I can't explain the effect that had on me. I've been watching the news. I've seen the spate of senseless attacks on young girls. But it never hit so hard as when my own mother called me to remind me that she loves me and that she wants me to be careful on the streets... It just pierced my heart and opened my eyes.

Have you ever really stopped to think about how our mothers must be fretting and worrying and praying with all their mights that this angel of death will not visit their homes?? How they must be agitated when their children leave home for schools in the mornings? How they must be relieved when their children return home from school in the evenings? How grateful they must be that the only harm their children saw that day were cuts and scrapes and playground bruises?

Betty-Ann Blaine started an organisation called 'Hear The Children's Cry', and that is very important. But I think, in this time, we need another group. For mothers. Nothing compares to a mother's love for her child, and I think, in this time, if mothers get together and exercise their creative genius, unleash the full extent of their maternal instincts, they will probably come up with more effective precautionary measures and solutions for this crisis than anybody else...

The Author

I'm in love with life, books, beads and dolphins. People fascinate me. I have partial daydreamertalkersleephappygolucky syndrome which means I dream alot (and I mean that in both senses: the fairytale, cottons-and-blue-skies way as well as the Martin Luther King Junior "I-have-a-dream" way), I rarely keep still (fidget alot). I love smiling and laughing. I know I am insane but I'm okay with it. *Deep breath* I have grown to accept that fact. I'm also an unredeemable NERD: nothing distracts me from a good book. I see my life as one big blessed adventure. That alone makes it pretty interesting...

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"Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground."-Theodore Roosevelt

"It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed."- Theodore Roosevelt

"Challenges are what make life interesting; overcoming them is what makes life meaningful."- Mark Twain

The soul is dyed the color of it's thoughts. Think only of those things that can bear the full light of day. The content of your character is your choice. Day by day, what you choose, what you think and what you do is who you become…

It is the size of one's will which determines success.

What the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve. - Napoleon Bonoparte

Winners must have two things: definite goals and a burning desire to achieve them.